An independent review of the first — and so far only — crewed test flight of Boeing CST-100 Starliner has concluded that the mission amounted to a potentially life-threatening “Type A mishap,” NASA officials revealed Thursday, describing a cascade of technical failures compounded by flawed decision-making and leadership shortcomings.
Boeing's CST-100 Starliner crew ship approaches the International Space Station on the company's Orbital Flight Test-2 mission Credit : NASA, Johnson Space Center
The spacecraft carried veteran NASA astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams to orbit in June 2024 for what was originally planned as an eight- to ten-day mission. Instead, the pair remained aboard the International Space Station for 286 days after NASA ultimately ruled out returning them to Earth aboard Starliner. They eventually returned home aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
“This was a really challenging event and … we almost did have a really terrible day,” said NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya. “We failed them.”
The independent review panel determined that the issues encountered during the mission met the threshold of a “Type A mishap” — NASA’s most serious accident classification. Such a designation is reserved for unexpected events that could result in loss of life or permanent disability, more than $2 million in government property damage, or the loss of a spacecraft or launch vehicle.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the financial impact of the Starliner mission exceeded the $2 million threshold “a hundred fold,” underscoring both the technical and programmatic severity of the episode.
But officials stressed that the gravest concern was not solely hardware failure.
“Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected,” Isaacman said. “But the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It’s decision making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human space flight.”
The months-long investigation cited a lengthy list of technical problems that were either not fully understood prior to launch or were deemed acceptable risks despite incomplete data. The review found that these issues, combined with management misjudgments, allowed the mission to proceed under conditions that significantly elevated crew risk.
While NASA did not detail every engineering flaw in its public summary, the propulsion system was singled out as requiring full requalification before any future crewed mission. The panel also criticized breakdowns in communication, oversight gaps, and risk assessment processes that failed to adequately account for the cumulative impact of multiple technical anomalies.
The findings represent a major setback for Boeing’s effort to field Starliner as a second U.S. commercial crew vehicle alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.
Despite the harsh conclusions, NASA reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining two independent American crew transportation systems to low Earth orbit — a core objective of the Commercial Crew Program designed to avoid reliance on a single provider.
“Sustained crew and cargo access to low Earth orbit will remain essential, and America benefits from competition and redundancy,” Isaacman said.
However, he made clear that no additional Starliner crewed missions will proceed until corrective actions are fully implemented.
“To be clear, NASA will not fly another crew on Starliner until technical causes are understood and corrected, the propulsion system is fully qualified and appropriate investigation recommendations are implemented,” he said.
The Starliner episode comes at a pivotal time for NASA’s human spaceflight strategy, as the agency balances ongoing International Space Station operations with ambitious lunar exploration goals under the Artemis program. The investigation’s emphasis on leadership culture and risk management echoes lessons drawn from past spaceflight tragedies, reinforcing NASA’s longstanding principle that organizational vigilance is as critical as engineering excellence.
For Boeing, the report marks a defining moment. Once envisioned as a cornerstone of America’s post-shuttle crew transportation capability, Starliner now faces the dual challenge of resolving hardware deficiencies and rebuilding institutional confidence within NASA.
For Wilmore and Williams, the mission ultimately ended safely — but the investigation makes clear how close the agency came to a far more dire outcome.
As Kshatriya put it bluntly: “We almost did have a really terrible day.”
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